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Abstract

How the knowledge base of disciplines grows, renews, and decays informs their distinct characteristics and epistemology. Here we track the evolution of knowledge bases of 19 disciplines for over 45 years. We introduce the notation of knowledge inheritance as the overlap in the set of references between years. We discuss two modes of knowledge inheritance of disciplines-successive and distant. To quantify the status and propensity of knowledge inheritance for disciplines, we propose two indicators: one descriptively describes knowledge base evolution, and one estimates the propensity of knowledge inheritance. When observing the continuity in knowledge bases for disciplines, we show distinct patterns for STEM and SS&H disciplines: the former inherits knowledge bases more successively, yet the latter inherits significantly from distant knowledge bases. We further discover stagnation or revival in knowledge base evolution where older knowledge base ceases to decay after 10 years (e.g., Physics and Mathematics) and are increasingly reused (e.g., Philosophy). Regarding the propensity of inheriting prior knowledge bases, we observe unanimous rises in both successive and distant knowledge inheritance. We show that knowledge inheritance could reveal disciplinary characteristics regarding the trajectory of knowledge base evolution and interesting insights into the metabolism and maturity of scholarly communication.

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Abstract

Interdisciplinary research is widely recognized as necessary to tackle some of the grand challenges facing humanity. It is generally believed that interdisciplinarity is becoming increasingly prevalent among Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. However, little is known about the evolution of interdisciplinarity in the Social Sciences. Also, how interdisciplinarity and its various aspects evolve over time has seldom been closely quantified and delineated. This paper answers these questions by capturing the disciplinary diversity of the knowledge base of scientific publications in nine broad Social Sciences fields over 55 years. The analysis considers diversity as a whole and its three distinct aspects, namely variety, balance, and disparity. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions are also conducted to investigate whether such change, if any, can be found among research with similar characteristics. We find that learning widely and digging deeply have become one of the norms among researchers in Social Sciences. Fields acting as knowledge exporters or independent domains maintain a relatively stable homogeneity in their knowledge base while the knowledge base of importer disciplines evolves towards greater heterogeneity. However, the increase of interdisciplinarity is substantially smaller when controlling for several author and publication related variables.